Gratitude and its drivers within higher education

Fiona Cownie

Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 2017, vol. 27, issue 2, 290-308

Abstract: This paper proposes that gratitude has a place in enabling us to understand students’ experiences of higher education, and this has an implication for higher education (HE) marketing. This research examines the evidence for and focus of gratitude within the context of an undergraduate course with high levels of student satisfaction. It finds that final-year students report feelings of gratitude and that students report that those feelings of gratitude are at their height within the final year. This exploratory research proposes that feelings of gratitude are driven by four factors: helping behaviors; care; perceived effort; and environment. For HE marketers, this suggests that there is merit in placing emphasis on academic-student interactions at the heart of marketing strategies, including branding strategies, open day events, marketing communications and social media content. There are clear opportunities for academics and marketing departments to benefit from the intention to give back that is central to the notion of gratitude.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08841241.2017.1389795 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jmkthe:v:27:y:2017:i:2:p:290-308

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/WMHE20

DOI: 10.1080/08841241.2017.1389795

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Marketing for Higher Education is currently edited by Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown, Anthony Lowrie and Dr. Thomas Hayes

More articles in Journal of Marketing for Higher Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().